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Phil Kerpen: Attacking cancer patients doesn’t fix Obamacare

7:27 p.m. CDT April 2, 2014

The federal government has simplified the application for health insurance benefits under the federal health care overhaul. j. david ake/AP
This application obtained by The Associated Press shows the short form for the new federal Affordable Care Act. The first draft was as mind-numbing as a tax form. Tuesday the Obama administration unveiled simplified application forms for health insurance benefits under the federal health care overhaul. The biggest change: a five-page short form that single people can fill out. That total includes a cover page with instructions, and an extra page to fill out if you want to designate someone to help you through the process. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)(Photo: J. David Ake, AP)

In a blockbuster Associated Press story, Kelli Kennedy reports that patients with cancer and other serious diseases all over the country are being hammered by the one-size-fits-all structure of Obamacare plans that imposes outrageously high out-of-pocket costs for their specialty drugs.

Kennedy tells us about breast cancer survivor Ginny Mason, who could no longer afford her arthritis medication under Obamacare. To stay on Celebrex, Mason would have had to pay $648 a month up to a $1,500 deductible, and then a co-pay of $85 a month.

Brian Rosen, senior vice president for public policy for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society told Kennedy that specialty cancer drugs are prohibitively expensive under Obamacare.

For patients who are told their drugs will cost thousands of dollars in a given month, the consequences are dire. Many simply do not have the money, and others face decisions like skipping a mortgage payment or a child’s tuition.

A recent study from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine “found that patients with higher co-payments were 70 percent more likely to stop taking their cancer treatment and 42 percent more likely to skip doses.”

The first time the issue came to their attention was in a devastating TV commercial that featured Dexter, Mich.’s Julie Boonstra, whose credibility liberals thought necessary to destroy.

A leukemia patient, Boonstra has been subjected to a brutal onslaught for having the temerity to stand up to Barack Obama and Gary Peters – a Michigan congressman who wants to be a senator – for their infamous lie that because she liked her health care plan she could keep it.

The attacks on Boonstra have already been thoroughly refuted by Dan Calabrese and Henry Payne, among others.

In brief, her premiums did go down considerably, but her new plan carries out-of-pocket expenses of over $5,000 in-network and over $10,000 if she has to go out of network — a real possibility for a cancer patient. And the new plan excludes long-term care and nursing care. Perhaps most significantly, her drug costs could easily force her to spend thousands in the first months of the year, before the out-of-pocket cap is reached — precisely the problem that the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society warns is happening to the sickest patients all over the country.

Sick Americans, already fighting for their lives, are now facing the additional stress of losing plans they were promised they could keep and confronting much higher out-of-pocket drug costs. Politicians who are so desperately touting their intention to "fix Obamacare" after the next election need to stop attacking patients for speaking out and start taking concrete actions — now — to actually solve the problem.